Good vs Evil, Positive vs Negative, my take on alignment

[Nomadic]

Before you read please take everything said with a grain of salt, it is my opinion and nothing more. Simply a look at how I integrate social views into my roleplaying. If you disagree you are welcome to say so, but please explain why your views differ. If you think that it follows your concepts then I encourage you to say why, you might think of something I missed.

As a side note there is a tl;dr version at the bottom for the more lazy people who just want to figure out what this thread is about so they can toss in their two cents.

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I've noticed a trend in stereotypical fiction. The "good guys" are viewed as creators while the "bad dudes" are destroyers. Take for example the classic fantasy races. Elves shape and create through nature, dwarves sculpt and craft the elements, humans harness the worlds abilities to craft new things, gnomes and halflings make use of the worlds natural laws to form their own items. Meanwhile we see orcs, kobolds, goblins, gnolls, and so forth as destroyers who burn, pillage, and wreck. This to me seems to be linked to the human concept that creation is good and destruction is bad. It interests me though that this is the case.

We can look at this as a form of alignment, though I think separate of classical 9 point alignment systems. If we take this from a purely human point of view (which makes sense as we humans are the ones that create these fantasy worlds, thus they are intrinsically linked to human concepts) we get a look at the two ends of a spectrum of good vs bad, or more appropriately positive vs negative. This is separate of good and evil, which are concepts that from the human perspective can change wildly from person to person. While positive and negative shift they tend to show largely similar traits between different people.

From my viewpoint they also tend to (at least in the form I am talking about), when separated from context, hinge upon creation vs destruction. For example we can look at some of the major ones as:

Positive:
- Creation or Preservation of Life: Policing/Protecting, Birth, Etc
- Creation or Preservation of Property: Art, Construction, , Etc
- Creation or Preservation of Knowledge: Invention, Teaching, Etc
- Creation or Preservation of Nature: Planting, Conservation, Etc

Negative:
- Destruction of Life: War, Murder, Etc
- Destruction of Property: Theft (not true destruction but it falls within the general concept), Vandalism, Etc
- Destruction of Knowledge: Book Burning, Indoctrination, Etc
- Destruction of Nature: Resource Exploitation, Pollution, Etc

The trend from a human perspective tends to be one where creation is a wholesome thing while destruction is bad. You might point out some destructive things where good came about because of them. However the above is dealing with the concepts separate of context. When context is added we tend to do a balancing act in our minds, weighing on the scale whether the positive outweighs the negative. Additionally we tend to factor in our personal views of good vs evil. For me this tends to be based on individual beliefs though good and evil tend to hinge on whether or not something is selfless or selfish. Of course because we mix this in with positive and negative it influences our views on how positive or negative something is. For example:

Nuclear Bombing of Japan

Person 1:
- Massive Number of Casualties (Destruction of Life: Negative)
- Saving of Potentially Massive Number of Lives (Preservation of Life: Positive and Good)
- Overall: Positive

Person 2:
- Massive Number of Casualties (Destruction of Life: Negative and Evil)
- Possible Saving of Other Lives (Preservation of Life: Positive)
- Needless Second Bombing (Selfish: Evil)
- Overall: Negative

Thus you will get two people where person one says the bombings were justified because they saved many more lives than they killed and person two saying they weren't because the lives can't be measured and that more than one bomb was needless. Neither one is arguing that the saving of life was or wasn't positive or that the destruction of life was or wasn't negative. If they are both average people they are generally going to agree on those points. What changes is their views on how good or evil and positive or negative something is (the emphasis and sometimes the opinion regarding the acts).

So now you are perhaps wondering what this has to do with anything in relation to roleplay design. Well I feel that classic alignment is a cookie cutter way of doing something that is far more dynamic. On the other end an alignment system can become nebulous to the point of uselessness in regards to gaming if one lets it. Good and Evil will always be a nebulous topic where one person thinks that murder is always evil and another thinks it is good if done for the right reasons. On the other hand when dealing with human thinking (which you normally will be since alien thinking tends to throw players off and mess up games) positive and negative will generally be the same. Sometimes you will get differences but for the purpose of gaming a DM can quickly figure out whether an act would be considered more positive or more negative (or neutral) and use that to affect social situations. So for example we might have the following situation:

The players come across a beggar who is sitting alongside the road, clearly famished. One of them stops and turns off the road and picks an apple from a nearby orchard. He returns and offers it to the beggar. The beggar refuses at first, explaining that the owner beat him with a cane the last time he stole fruit from his trees. The player promises the beggar that he will not allow such a thing to happen to him. Finally the beggar accepts the food. The farmer spots this and storms out, angry that someone is stealing from him again. He yells at the player and threatens to cane both them and the beggar and report them to the local guardsmen. The player stands their ground and tells the farmer that he should be ashamed for allowing the poor to starve while he lives in relative comfort with plenty of food. Hearing the conviction in their voice and the truth of their statements the farmer reluctantly backs down, but asks that in the future they ask him before taking from his orchard.

If we break this up we can take a look at the thought processes of each and see how a DM can use Positive and Negative to quickly figure out how an NPC might react, additionally a player might use it to gauge whether and how their character reacts. With each look it then becomes easy to think about whether or not the PC/NPC views the act as evil or good enough to tip the scale back over to the other side. For example the scene starts with the PC getting food for a hungry beggar the preservation of life is positive and their views of good cause the positive to become strong enough to make them step in and help. The beggar at first is reluctant as they fear the farmer and his promise of harm (destruction of well being, it weighs more heavily as it affects his own well being) and possibly feel shame at stealing (destruction of property). The PC assures them that they will protect them from the farmer (preservation of life) and that coupled with the beggars belief that not allowing someone to help another is selfish wins him over and he humbly takes the food. The farmer sees the theft (destruction of property, weighs heavily as it is his property) and storms out to stop what he views as selfish (evil) thieves. He threatens to cane them both (destruction of well being is negative but preservation of property and the personal belief that thieves are evil causes his meter to tip caning them over to the more positive side). The player with righteous anger rebukes the farmer (pc sees destruction of well being twice, once from letting beggar starve and again from threatening them with harm, furthermore they consider the farmers "hoarding" of food as selfish thus to them the act is strongly negative). The players conviction to protect the beggar (preservation of well being) and the truth in their words (withholding food/caning = destruction of well being = negative) finally tips the farmers views of caning back over to the more negative than positive side, and the conflict ends with the farmer asking them to ask instead of steal in the future (preservation of property, sharing instead of stealing as good).

So anyhow that is my idea regarding a potential way to take human concepts of good vs bad and use them to quickly gauge how a normal person would react to a situation. You might realize that really Creation vs Destruction is just another way to look at Law vs Chaos. This is true and law vs chaos is a perfectly fine thing to call the alternating viewpoints, the important thing is making it dynamic instead of using it as a character cookie cutter. Of course now that you all are aware of how I handle alignment you will probably be able (and totally willing) to manipulate my NPCs regardless of the fact that I don't actually use alignment labels. In short I'm probably screwed if I ever run a cbg game. :P

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tl;dr version - Humans tend to agree on what is positive and what is negative with opinion differences generally arising from different views on how positive/negative something is and if it is good or evil. As a DM or Player this can be used to gauge character reactions to a situation on the fly. Positive/Negative generally focuses on creation vs destruction while Good/Evil is more about selfless vs selfish acts.

So any thoughts?

[Kindling]

This is certainly a more fluid and realistic system of alignment than any I've come across before. However, I still tend to wonder "why"

I mean, when I look at the example you gave, it seems obvious to me what all of the characters are motivated by, and while your positive/negative dichotomy help codify that, I don't really see how it would help you to actually play the scene out. It seems to me that stopping and thinking "does such-and-such view this as destruction of property or destruction of knowledge?" is a somewhat long winded way of going about looking into an NPC thought-process which, regardless of morality, would probably be more like "they're breaking my stuff! aahhh!"

Okay, maybe I'm over-simplifying, but my point is that while your post is very interesting and well thought-out, I see it as more of value as an analytical tool than something that would actual aid gameplay.

[Ghostman]

Positive:
- Creation or Preservation of Life: Policing/Protecting, Birth, Etc
- Creation or Preservation of Property: Art, Construction, , Etc
- Creation or Preservation of Knowledge: Invention, Teaching, Etc
- Creation or Preservation of Nature: Planting, Conservation, Etc

Negative:
- Destruction of Life: War, Murder, Etc
- Destruction of Property: Theft (not true destruction but it falls within the general concept), Vandalism, Etc
- Destruction of Knowledge: Book Burning, Indoctrination, Etc
- Destruction of Nature: Resource Exploitation, Pollution, Etc

The trend from a human perspective tends to be one where creation is a wholesome thing while destruction is bad.

Humans can easily view the destruction of nature as a very positive thing. Nature is scary; it has dangerous wildlife and can be difficult and uncomfortable to travel through. Humans generally have a hard time coming up with just necessities (food, shelter, etc) purely from the natural environment, and they can forget about luxuries. Destruction of nature generally means replacing it with man-made things that are much more pleasant and beneficial for humans (eg. roads, urban and suburban areas, industry). Here the destruction of natural things leads to the creation of unnatural things which are preferable, but that is not the point. The point is that, viewed from human perspective, nature in and of itself can be a very negative thing.

Knowledge is another iffy subject. Especially the creation of new knowledge instead of just preserving existing knowledge. There could be a belief that mankind already possesses all the knowledge they ought to, perhaps given by divine authority, and that everything else is corrupting things that man isn't meant to know. In a fantasy setting this could actually be the case, too.

[Nomadic]

Indeed however context is the key aspect here. Nature is actually neutral. It destroys and it creates in equal measure. It is fickle, however we need it in order to live. In the case of replacing nature with manmade things we have destruction of nature (negative) balanced with creation of property (positive), add to that the fact that most people consider signs of civilization as good and it tips such an act over to the positive side. For people where doing that is considered evil it would be seen as negative (see: environmentalists)

As for the knowledge we have a positive, creation of knowledge. However if the knowledge is considered forbidden or dangerous for man to know, uncovering it would generally fall under selfish (evil) and depending on how dangerous the knowledge was that could tip you over to negative.

Certainly if you looked hard enough you could probably find gaps where this logic doesn't follow, but it works quite nicely for general stuff.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Except Creation and Destruction are human concepts, the application of images of form from human minds onto the world around them and naming the transitional phases between images.  And in fact whether something is termed Creation or Destruction relies on a certain point of view.

Carving a statue from a block of stone?  Creation because you've imposed a new shape.  Destruction because the block of stone no longer exists in its original form.
Killing an animal for food?  Destruction because the animal now no longer exists.  Creation because now there is food for people.
And then what is the overthrowing of a cherished tradition?  Destruction to some, Creation of new opportunities to others.

When humans invoke the language of Creation and Destruction they try to impose hard and fast rules of states on a world that doesn't quite work like that.  In the real world Destruction leads into Creation, and Creation results from Destruction.

Your analyzation of Alignment via Creation/Destruction is a good one, since that is how humans tend to see the world.  But like all other Alignment systems it's obvious it's not a system of the non-human world, that it's an imposition and that it would not exist if the world operated according to the real non-human rules.

[Nomadic]

Carving a statue from a block of stone?  Creation because you've imposed a new shape.  Destruction because the block of stone no longer exists in its original form.
Killing an animal for food?  Destruction because the animal now no longer exists.  Creation because now there is food for people.
And then what is the overthrowing of a cherished tradition?  Destruction to some, Creation of new opportunities to others.

When humans invoke the language of Creation and Destruction they try to impose hard and fast rules of states on a world that doesn't quite work like that.  In the real world Destruction leads into Creation, and Creation results from Destruction.

Your analyzation of Alignment via Creation/Destruction is a good one, since that is how humans tend to see the world.  But like all other Alignment systems it's obvious it's not a system of the non-human world, that it's an imposition and that it would not exist if the world operated according to the real non-human rules.
[/quote]

No and it doesn't try to be. It has worked fine for me so far, of course if I ever got a player who wasn't human it would probably fail horribly. But so far I haven't run into any roleplaying aliens :D

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good comments from both of you, helped me expound upon the idea better than if nobody had said anything.

[LordVreeg]

Nomadic, good thoughts and a nice job at hitting one of the interminable questions in a new light.

It brushes on the way I actually score alignments for my players, which deals with 'Absolute vs Contextual' judgement.  Your examples also deal with this, especially in the Nuclear bombing example.  [note=Celtricia] Players in Celtricia are not asked alignment nor are they asked to keep within alignment strictures. I do keep score on the side on a graph, however. [/note]
This can also be seen as 'how others view the actions of a person' vs 'how the person views their own actions'.  Your beggar/farmer example could actually be seen in many different contexts and could have ended in different ways, depending on the circumstances.  The beggar HAS stolen apples before, at least once.  The farmer might have been letting him off easy in local politics, perhaps if the farmer had called the contabulary, the beggar would have been beaten and locked up.  The adventurer may be reinforcing the beggar's disinclination to work, or he may be shaming a farmer who works hard and already gives much to the poor.

This is why I tend to view my PC actions heavily weighted to the 'contextual' alignment view, as I wish to 'score' them based on what they believe they are doing as much as what they really are doing.  

[Superfluous Crow]

Interesting from a roleplaying-philosophical point of view.
You mention selflessness vs. selfishness yourself, but how will it work with the following two examples:
1) the beggar steals from the orchard
2) the adventurer steals from the orchard to give it to the beggar.
In the first case he attempts to preserve his own life, which is, in a way, a selfish case of Preservation of Life. In the second case it's instead a selfless case of Preservation of Life as the adventurer attempts to aid another being without personal reasons.
So the beggar case, where he is just attempting to survive, is arguably the more evil of the two by your model?
(There are ways around this, just wanted to mention it)
I think maybe you should consider another element to have an influence on your axis: the Creation/Destruction of Choice. Giving people a second chance, or the opportunity to prove themselves in a job is usually seen as good, while slavery and black mail are deeds of evil.  
 

[Matt Larkin (author)]

However, I still tend to wonder "why"

I'm with Kindling here. I think the only use of an alignment system is in a game where you want to clearly define two factions directly fighting each other (and catch the PCs up in it). If these factions are good/evil, then it should not be a matter of human conflicts, but divine ones.

And even then, I find alignment a questionable mechanic. No matter how well designed and well thought out a system you've got here, I can't see that I'd want to use it.

An alignment system might actually be more interesting if it was something less charged and more original. Cold and heat, nature and progress, etc. Even the Order/Chaos divide would have been so much more interesting if D&D hadn't tried to map it onto the Good/Evil divide as a cohesive whole (which forced them to define Law and Chaos in slightly odd ways).

[Nomadic]

Certainly vreeg it is a situation that depends on the NPCs viewpoints, in that particular example though the farmers outrage at being stolen from and his possible contributions to the poor was outweighed by his views of the PCs selfless acts and his acknowledgment that the beggar needed the food more than he needed to keep it. Had the farmer considered stealing more evil, or the PCs actions as nosey, or anything else, things would have very quickly gone south. But that's how I DM, NPCs won't always react the same way to the same situation and it pays to do your homework before partaking in delicate social situations more than just giving you a +2 to your diplomacy check. You can actually play the system if you figure out the other sides beliefs (something I encourage my players to do).

As to Phoenix and CCs posts, both good responses. Firstly this isn't an alignment system the same way the DnD one is an alignment system. The DnD system is a universal rule that sticks people into certain mentalities. This system is a hard and fast way for the DM and the Players to figure out how someone will react in a social encounter. Positive vs Negative will generally remain the same and so right off the bat you get an idea of how a person might react to an action. You can then choose to flavor it based on whether they think the act is good, evil, or neutral. Note that this is good and evil the individual viewpoint, not good and evil the universal forces. Nothing to do with two conflicting powers its a way to think "well this action is more positive than negative, but the npc considers it a very evil act from their point of view thus it looks negative to them and they respond in kind". For me this is a way to on the fly figure out how a person will react without having to chart every persons social aspects or use blind charisma rolls. It makes a nice middle ground. So the term alignment here is probably not what most people think when you say alignment. It's more of a personal opinion alignment on what a person considers good and bad.

[Xeviat]

Nomadic is definitely writing with a very modern outlook. As Ghostman says, nature can be viewed as scary, and thus it is something to fight. What is good about Nomadic's system is it allows a GM to quickly decide how NPCs should ask when confronted with unexpected player actions. It is definitely the most organic treatment of morality and ethics I've seen; I especially like it because it makes the creation of an "evil" character that ends up seeming far more realistic than others, since they are still right in their mind (which is important for all but psychotic characters).

It doesn't seem useful for putting a designation on a character sheet, but it definitely shows a way to look at things. Then again, I have never had a problem with alignment, and I think it is a useful tool to help some players conceptualize how they will have their character act: "Lord Bottomtooth will beat the thieves and drag them to the constable since they stole, and he is unswayed by their plight since he is Lawful Neutral".

Some worlds do need a sharp designation between good and evil. I personally think D&D is missing something without spells like "Magic Circle Against X". But my own setting doesn't need it, and settings like WoW's Azeroth definitely don't need it (though they do have "evil" when it comes to the scourge; everyone can agree that the scourge are evil).